Music trimmed in name of efficiency

April 04, 2007|DAVID WATTS BARTON The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee

If a defining feature of our time is too much information and too little time, then perhaps what the world needs now is a good old-fashioned two-minute pop record. So argues George Gimarc, a veteran radio programmer in Dallas who is beta-testing an Internet version of what he says will change the way we listen to the radio -- whether on the Internet, off a satellite or over the public airwaves. "There used to be a 2:30 ... barrier that artists were limited to," he says. "But pop got fat." Gimarc's solution is RadioSASS, which will air what he calls a new radio "protocol" that cuts popular hits down to size: an average of two minutes per song. (The SASS stands for Short Attention Span System.) "I watched how people listened to the radio, or their iPods, and found that people were punching from station to station about two minutes into each song," Gimarc says by phone from Dallas. "They (radio consultants) used to tell us that people changed because they didn't like the songs, but I found that people would invariably say, 'I just wanted to see what else was on.' It was two verses in, when the big guitar solo came on. We are in such a high-speed society, we're ready for the next one." Although Gimarc has been working on RadioSASS for seven years, he still hasn't found a station "willing to go first," but he has edited down about 1,500 songs (using any number of digital audio editing programs) and says he's gotten to the point where he can digitally edit about five songs an hour. He says he has a team of seven "musician-editors" standing by for his first client. Meantime, he sells records from his collection of 65,000 and tries to sell RadioSASS at every opportunity. He's not just a wannabe, however. Gimarc, 49, says that during the 29 years he was in radio full time, he co-created the radio format known as the Edge, an alternative rock format. He's also written three books about music, including a day-to-day history of punk, "Punk Diary: The Ultimate Trainspotter's Guide to Underground Rock" (Pub Group West, $24.95 paperback). He notes that RadioSASS is not a format, which indicates a particular stylistic mix, but a protocol, which indicates a way of presenting music, in whatever style. Whatever the style addressed -- and Gimarc says that country and pop radio are a higher priority for him than classic rock -- Gimarc also says that not a single listener in his focus groups noticed that the songs were shorter, often half their original length. What they said, he reports, "was that the station had a lot of energy." He attributes that to the rapid-fire introduction of a new song much sooner than usual. Although cries from fans and artists are likely to be fierce -- the Internet site is so new (6 months old) that few have heard it -- he argues that the new protocol actually favors artists because at least twice as many songs will get on the air. As for potential objections from artists and labels over the alteration of the tracks, Gimarc says he isn't worried. "Radio has been altering songs for airplay for 40 years, lopping off intros, endings, guitar solos," he says. "Record companies want airplay, and they're willing to tolerate a lot." As proof, Gimarc cites mash-ups: "These are edits of more than one song by more than one artist on more than one label, which is about as in-your-face as an alteration gets. And the labels and artists have never challenged it." The bottom line, he says, is this: "If an artist came to us and said, 'Either you play the long version or not at all,' we'd say, 'Fine: we won't play it at all.' " Listening to the first of two hours of would-be radio programming at radioSASS.com is a disorienting but not un-pleasant experience. It is especially good if you don't like the song because it will be over soon, but even if you love it, Gimarc's edits, reducing the songs to their essence, keep familiar landmarks of sometimes overly familiar songs. Gimarc has little trouble trimming excess choruses and refrains from such songs as "Build Me Up Buttercup" by the Foundations and "I Feel the Earth Move" by Carole King. On the other hand, just as you're getting into the percolating groove of Stevie Wonder's "Boogie On Reggae Woman," it's over. Other songs, such as Crosby, Stills and Nash's seven-minute, three-part opus "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," ends up feeling a bit skimpy at two minutes, 15 seconds. He says there's an art to editing tracks so tightly. "To edit music, you have to have someone who loves the music," he says. "We spend a lot of time to get all of the bits that you remember in, but still keep it moving." And there are some classics Gimarc says he won't touch. "I won't do (Queen's) 'Bohemian Rhapsody' or (Led Zeppelin's) 'Stairway to Heaven,' " he says. Apparently, even in our efficiency-obsessed culture, some things remain sacred.